


Hurricane

by magsainsley



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: IPRE-Era, its rated teen for some language, just a little sibling study cuz i love taako and lup
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-13
Updated: 2017-06-13
Packaged: 2018-11-13 17:42:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,454
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11190105
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/magsainsley/pseuds/magsainsley
Summary: Lup is afraid of storms, for good reason. Taako reminisces. Lucretia hopes her calendar is right.





	Hurricane

Taako woke to a loud crackle outside the ship and a single thought in his mind: he had to find his sister. He pulled on his slippers, his progress lit by the flashes of light through the portholes, and padded softly down the hallway to Lup and Lucretia's shared cabin, running his hand along the wall in case the thunder shook the ship even harder than it did now. Once at the girls' cabin door, Taako entered, not bothering to knock. He knew he'd be welcomed in.

Lup was sitting on her bunk with her knees pulled to her chest, white as a sheet. Lucretia sat beside her, her hand on Lup's shoulder, stroking her hair and trying to coach her through some sort of breathing exercise. They both looked up at Taako once they'd noticed him, and both their expressions softened with relief.

Taako sat beside Lup on her bunk, back pressed to the wall with his feet tucked under him and took his sister's hand, running his thumb gently over the back of it. Lup relaxed into him, shoulder pressed to shoulder, and let out a sigh.

"We haven't had a storm like this in a while," he remarked, just loud enough to be heard over the wind and driving rain outside. Lup nodded, eyes still looking nervous and a bit vacant.

Lucretia hummed her agreement. "Not for thirty years or so, wouldn't you say Lup?"

Lup nodded again, and said, "sounds like a hurricane to me."

It was probably too subtle for Lucretia to notice, but Lup's grip on Taako's hand tightened slightly at the mention of 'hurricane,' and there was the slightest wavering hitch in her voice. The two of them had been through a hurricane before, and it had not been pretty.

.oOo.

After their Mumma's death, and then after their aunt's, Taako and Lup had been sent to live with distant cousins in a small town about forty miles outside of New Elfington, on the coast. The cousins had been nice enough, and the twins were fed well enough, though the cooking was nowhere near as good as their Tanta's had been. Not yet enrolled in school in their new hometown, they explored the house and their new surroundings, playing at the beach, going swimming, and going into town to see what was what.

Life wasn't all too bad for Lup and Taako, other than their dead relatives and not being allowed in the kitchen. ('You'll burn yourselves!', 'there are sharp knives in here!' the cousins had insisted). That is until the storm hit.

The weather had been rainy and blustery all that week. They both had flinched at the loud cracks of thunder, gasped, and stuck their hands out for each other, then collapsed to giggles at having been so silly as to have been afraid. They stayed indoors and got cabin fever, playing way too much cards for their patiences and watching with confusion as neighbours began shuttering their windows and bringing in palettes of food and supplies towards the end of the week.

Eight days after the rainy spell started, the big storm hit. Most people in town were too poor to evacuate or had nowhere to go if they did leave, and Taako and Lup's cousins were no exception. They hunkered down in the house and tried to wait out the storm the best they could. The twins were caught off-guard, however, woken in the middle of the night by loud thunder, driving rain, booming waves crashing onto the nearby pebbly shore, and snaps as lightning and wind broke trees. The windowpanes rattled and the beams of the house groaned. Taako could see the irises of Lup's reflective eyes across the room, wide as dishes with alarm.

Taako had crawled over to sit on Lup's bed with her, and mere moments after he had reached her, the roof over his bed collapsed. They both shrieked in terror and Taako held Lup even closer, ready to take the brunt of the damage should her part of the ceiling give way as well. He could feel his pulse in his ears and chest all the way until morning. All night, they had heard more collapses in other places (they couldn't tell if it was their house or neighbours') and the rush of adrenaline combined with the inclement weather had made it all but impossible to sleep.

They woke up exhausted and damp, dusty and bruised, but safe the next morning, the house around them destroyed.

Lup shook as she raised her head to look around the disaster scene. She removed herself from Taako's protective embrace and stretched her limbs, then stood to look even closer and check if anything could be salvaged. Nothing remained. Everything in their new home, save themselves and a few other buildings deeper into town, had been reduced to rubble, their cousins included. Taako could hear Lup's shaking breaths as he moved to stand beside her and she murmured, "I don't wanna be in a storm like this ever again, Taak." 

He gave her hand a reassuring squeeze and nodded his agreement. "Me neither Lu."

The twins set out from the tiny coastal town for the beginning of their nomadic lives with nothing but each other and a mistrust of storms.

.oOo.

A few years later, it was nighttime in the tiny cart Taako and Lup shared with a couple of the other "backyard boys," inexperienced carnies whose job was to help set up and maintain the living area when the whole hoopla was up in a lot. Their hammocks swung with the caravan's movement on its route, and thunder could be heard in the distance as a storm approached. Taako was awake, staring at the ceiling. He didn't get much sleep at this job, the cart's motion made him nauseous, but it paid enough, and kept him and Lup moving until they could find something better. In the hammock below his, Taako heard Lup wake up with a gasp when the storm grew closer and looked to find her shaking and curled up as small as possible. His own heart was racing as well, and he hung down by his knees to gently tap her shoulder and beckon her to sit with him. They spent the night huddled on Taako's bunk, each comforting the other by trying to be strong for their twin.

There were many nights spent like that in the years to come, and not much improvement until they got to magic school.

The loud booms, smashes, and crashes from Lup's evocation training had somewhat desensitised Taako to thunder's similar sounds. Lup, however, never seemed to shake her fear of storms. Taako could never divine a reason why she hadn't, but he did his best to remain the calm one and help Lup through the sleepless stormy nights. They probably weren't any closer to making any progress on this mission to remedy Lup's phobia. Not with the annual stormlike event frequently fucking up planets, crewmates, and new planar denizen friends. Thus, Lup, Taako, and Lucretia had developed their own temporary solution: cuddle it out and distract each other until the thunderstorm passes.

"I don't like this one at all," Lucretia said, running a thumb over her lip.

"You know what it reminds me of?" Lup asked as if about to deliver grim news, obviously in agreement with her roommate.

"...What?" Taako cautiously replied.

"A huge stomach growling."

There was a heavy silence as Lucretia and Taako locked eyes in a silent conversation, trying to remember if it was the end of the year yet. By the time they concluded that no, they still had about four months left in this cycle, the storm had passed, leaving only some rain and a gentle rumble in the distance, akin to a purring engine just louder than the Starblaster's own.

"Are you okay to go back to bed, Lu?" Taako asked, playing with the end of Lup's braid. When she nodded, he got up, said goodnight to her and to Lucretia, and returned to his and Magnus' cabin, feeling a little shaken. Maybe this mission was causing his own fear of storms to come back, Taako thought. He certainly had a lifetime's worth of scary, Hunger-related storm memories at this point, and the fear had never been fully gone to begin with. It hadn't helped that tonight's storm had indeed sounded like a rumbling stomach, just as Lup had said.

Taako knew a lot of people thought thunderstorms were a kid's fear. He wished they knew as he did that there was good reason to be afraid of bad weather. But who was he kidding? he wouldn't wish his life on anyone.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [How We Survive](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12410991) by [Orion Arthur Rietveld (ameowicafjones)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ameowicafjones/pseuds/Orion%20Arthur%20Rietveld)




End file.
